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The 118th Congress has hit the 100-day mark, and the honeymoon period is officially over.
That’s especially true for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, writes The Hill’s Emily Brooks and Mike Lillis. The California Republican endured a torturous road to the Speakership in January but recovered quickly with a legislative agenda that has highlighted GOP priorities, thrown Democrats on defense, crafted decisive China policy and even steamrolled President Biden into signing a contentious measure overturning a Washington, D.C., crime reform bill.
Yet as the new Congress hits its 100-day mark, McCarthy faces some of the toughest tests of his fledgling tenure. Republicans are bracing for party-defining battles with Biden and the Democrats over raising the debt ceiling and funding the government — and failure to find consensus in both could wreak havoc on an already fragile economy. For McCarthy, these negotiations will test his ability to unite a fractious conference in a debate where a misfire could result in economic turmoil or efforts to strip him of his gavel.
“There are [Republican] members who — whether explicitly or implicitly — make it clear that they are not going to go along with an agenda that they don’t like. So this is a really, really difficult spot,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a senior member of the Budget Committee, told The Hill of McCarthy’s position. “We’ll see if he can make it through.”
While the House GOP is generally united behind McCarthy’s attempts to force the president to negotiate spending cuts as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, they’ve suffered internal disputes over policy priorities, behind-the-scenes tensions and the party’s failure to come together and produce a budget blueprint to counter Biden’s proposal. But Republicans across the conference insist that the increase in cross-ideological conversations has only helped them tackle other issues since the initial tense Speakership race. Those conversations will be necessary when Congress returns to Washington next week after its spring recess and faces a shrinking window to raise the cap on the government’s borrowing authority.
“Admittedly, after that first week, you could have all been forgiven for assuming that we were to aim and can’t shoot straight,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the Main Street Caucus. “But the reality is, we’ve done more talking than … we’ve ever done before.”
McCarthy isn’t the only House Republican to top the headlines in these first 100 days. The Hill’s Brooks, Lillis and Mychael Schnell highlight five GOP members who’ve shaped their conference since January, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.).
CNN: Media organizations sue for Capitol Hill surveillance tapes that McCarthy gave to Fox News.
Across the aisle, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced on Wednesday that her return to work in Washington has been delayed due to ongoing health issues and called on the Senate to appoint a temporary replacement for her on the Judiciary Committee. Her announcement came hours after Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) called for her to resign from the chamber. Feinstein, 89, won’t be seeking reelection in 2024. She remains out of Washington while recovering from shingles, which has stalled the confirmation of Biden’s judicial appointments due (The Hill).
“We have a crisis in the judiciary with extremist judges stripping away women’s rights. You can’t preach on television about the danger of these judges and then sit silently as Senator Feinstein misses vote after vote to confirm pro-choice judges,” Khanna told NBC News. “It’s time for California officials who care deeply about reproductive rights to call on her to step down at this moment in history.”
▪ SF Gate: What would happen if Feinstein resigned now?
▪ Politico: Feinstein’s condition sparks concern she won’t return to the Senate.
Related Articles
▪ The Hill and NBC News: Patient access to the abortion pill mifepristone was preserved on Wednesday with limitations by a federal appeals court, which blocked part of a ruling issued last week by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas. The Justice Department has the option to try to block all of the Texas judge’s ruling by taking the case to the Supreme Court where the government would need support from five of the nine justices on the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. Read the appeals court ruling HERE.
▪ The Washington Post: Tennessee expulsions prompt Senate Democrats to call for Justice Department inquiry.
▪ CNN: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had a “very productive” meeting with a Saudi crown prince he previously criticized.
▪ Roll Call: Key House GOP lawmaker urges debt limit vote this month.
LEADING THE DAY
➤ ECONOMY
Inflation cooled in March, according to the consumer price index released on Wednesday. Prices for the year as measured through March rose 5 percent, an improvement over sky-high inflation last summer and a drop from 6 percent in February (The Hill).
On the upside, it could be the slowdown the Federal Reserve has hoped to see. Investors and analysts say there is more data ahead before the Fed’s next meeting May 2-3, when the central bank could decide to pause its program to raise interest rates or hike by a quarter-point one more time. The Fed inflation target remains 2 percent, which means, as The New York Times reported, there’s a long road back to normal.
The Hill: Five takeaways from the March inflation slowdown.
📉 Recession?: Gita Gopinath, the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, on Wednesday said the U.S. economy remains in a precarious position with little room for error. “If you look at the very recent data, you see some signs of softening,” Gopinath told CNBC in Washington, D.C. “That gives us the possibility that we could avoid a recession,” she said. “If you look at our growth numbers, we’re looking at very low growth numbers for the U.S., and so the risks of a hard landing remain,” she added.
🥚Some consumers are cheering the price breaks they can see: Egg prices have fallen (The Hill). In March, the drop in the cost of eggs was 11 percent, the most dramatic dive since 1987 (Bloomberg News). In fact, the entire so-called food index eased for the first time since September 2020.
📫 If you’re going to write home about the eggs, do it soon. The U.S. Postal Service, whose definition of “forever” when it comes to stamp pricing is peculiar, said postal rates will rise (again) on July 9, by three cents to 66 cents for a first-class stamp. Ouch.
🔑 Shelter in place: Millennials born between 1981 and 1996 are now a homeowner majority generation, a milestone achieved amid a global pandemic and an unsteady housing market. Their ranks reached 18.2 million last year (The Hill).
🏦 When to worry: Warren Buffett, who was born in 1930 when 1,350 banks closed their doors, thinks depositors should calm down about bank turmoil, which he said on Wednesday might not be over. “The costs of the [Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.] are borne by the banks. Banks have never cost the federal government a dime. The public doesn’t understand that,” Buffett told CNBC. “Nobody is going to lose money on a deposit in a U.S. bank. It’s not going to happen … you don’t need to turn a dumb decision by managers into panicking the whole citizenry of the United States about something they don’t need to be panicked about.”
➤ ADMINISTRATION
Biden on Wednesday kicked off a trip commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland with a warning on the delicate state of democracy.
“As a friend, I hope it’s not too presumptuous for me to say, but I believe democratic institutions established in the Good Friday Agreement remain critical to the future of Northern Ireland,” Biden said. “That’s a decision for you to make, not for me to make.”
While the Good Friday Agreement ended decades of bloodshed between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland — which is part of the U.K. — and the Republic of Ireland, tensions and animosity persist. Speaking in Belfast, where he spent half of Wednesday, Biden urged the leaders of Northern Ireland to restore their government, which has not been fully functional since February 2022 (The Washington Post and Reuters).
While in Northern Ireland, Biden also met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. He then headed south to Ireland for two-and-a-half days of speeches and meetings with officials and distant relatives. The president’s visit came amid a flare-up of political violence that had Belfast’s police on heightened alert (The New York Times).
▪ The Hill: Document with security details on Biden’s Belfast trip found on street.
▪ Politico EU: Why Biden’s trip to Belfast went better than it looked.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is still dealing with the fallout of the worst intelligence breach in a decade, after a number of classified documents surfaced on various social media sites. Officials are still reviewing and assessing the validity of photographed documents “that appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material” (The Wall Street Journal).
▪ The Washington Post: Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says.
▪ Politico: Why the U.S. didn’t notice leaked documents circulating on social media.
▪ The Atlantic: Everything about the Ukraine leak is incredibly weird. Secrets were “sitting in a … Discord server for a month, and nobody noticed.”
▪ The Hill: Leaks test western unity in fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
▪ NBC News: U.S. intelligence agencies may change the way they monitor social media and chatrooms after leaked classified documents went undetected by the government for at least a month.
IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES
➤ POLITICS
State legislative expulsions may be trending as punishment but the political price of public scrutiny can be high.
Democrat Justin Pearson was reinstated to the Tennessee legislature on Wednesday, following the return on Monday of his colleague, Rep. Justin Jones (The Washington Post). The two men, both Black, were expelled by the Republican-controlled state House last week after they demonstrated with a bullhorn against gun violence and called for gun restrictions. The resulting publicity about their ouster made them national celebrities in the eyes of many Democrats and reinforced accusations that Tennessee Republicans overreached, were racist and unwittingly served to boost the agenda of the minority party ahead of 2024 elections.
The Republican-controlled Arizona House on Wednesday voted to expel now-former state Rep. Liz Harris (R), accused of committing “disorderly behavior” by inviting a woman to testify to lawmakers who accused numerous Republican and Democratic public officials of laundering money for the Sinaloa drug cartel through the use of fraudulent mortgage documents. The woman also accused the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints of being “integral to the laundering activities.” A legislative ethics committee found that Harris’s decision to invite the testimony damaged the “institutional integrity of the [Arizona] House” (KPNX 12News).
2024 Watch: Republicans on Wednesday said they’re skeptical that Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is exploring a bid for the White House, can win the GOP primary next year if Trump remains a candidate and continues to dominate in Republican polls (The Hill). … Why are so many potential GOP presidential contenders still testing the 2024 waters, pondering, listening, procrastinating and gauging their odds? (The New York Times). … In Trump legal news, he’s fundraising with success off his recent Manhattan arrest and indictment (The Hill). … He’s suing his former lawyer Michael Cohen (The Hill) and separately, the former president asked to delay a May trial at which E. Jean Carroll is accusing him of defamation and sexual assault in the 1990s (CNN). … In the federal probe into Trump’s retention of classified documents in Florida, investigators have asked several witnesses whether the former president showed them a map that contained sensitive intelligence information (The New York Times).
▪The Hill’s The Memo: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) sued Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio): Four takeaways.
▪ The Hill: News organizations sued in federal court on Wednesday, demanding government access to Jan. 6 footage released by the Speaker to Fox News as well as other video evidence sought by news outlets under the Freedom of Information Act from various federal agencies.
▪ NBC News: A Fox Corp. shareholder sued Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch and several members of the Fox Corp. board of directors on Tuesday, arguing they violated their fiduciary duty to the company when they allowed Fox News to broadcast election conspiracy theories. Fox News and Fox Corp. head to trial next week in a $1.6 billion defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which has revealed through discovery that many at Fox News knew claims of a rigged 2020 election were false even as they allowed the continued broadcast of such falsehoods.
Meanwhile, southern Democrats are fuming that their party’s national presidential nominating convention will be held next year in Chicago rather than Atlanta because in their view, Georgia sent two Democratic senators to Washington and eked out a majority while helping put Biden in the Oval Office (The Hill).
A larger, decades-old question is whether Democratic candidates can win seats convincingly in the white, rural South? In 2018, Jaime Harrison, then the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, told the Harvard Political Review that “[Democrats] started losing races all across the South” after Organizing for America, focused the Democratic National Committee’s support for former President Obama, meant that the DNC downplayed support the party in 50 states. “[Democrats] eventually lost the majority in the House. That majority was built on southern seats,” Harrison said five years ago. In 2021, he was elected to a four-year term as DNC chair with Biden’s support, although tensions surfaced ahead of fears that the midterms would turn out to be a bloodbath for Democrats (NBC News).
Harrison’s South Carolina expertise may come in handy while Republican voters weigh GOP presidential primary contender Nikki Haley, a former governor of the Palmetto State, and South Carolina’s Scott, who has given every indication that he, too, could challenge Trump by playing up his own biography in his home state.
▪ Vox: Why three Democratic lawmakers defected to the GOP. Should Democrats worry?
▪ VoteBeat: The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) helps prevent voter fraud and previously won praise in states that are now leaving the voter roll coalition. Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, West Virginia, Missouri, and Ohio have announced they will exit and Iowa’s secretary of state has said he’ll ask the legislature to end the state’s participation in ERIC. Texas is widely expected to be next in line. What’s going on?
➤ INTERNATIONAL
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday urged international leaders to act after a disturbing video emerged of Russian soldiers apparently beheading a Ukrainian prisoner of war who was lying on the ground, saying the world could not ignore the “evil” footage (The Guardian).
“How easily these beasts kill,” Zelensky said. “We are not going to forget anything. Neither are we going to forgive the murderers. There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary.”
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday that Ukraine remains confident in its ability to launch its counteroffensive against Russia despite the fallout from leaked U.S. intelligence documents (The Wall Street Journal).
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday met with Zelensky in Ukraine, accompanied by country music celebrity Brad Paisley (The Hill). Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) were among the VIPs who made the trip to Kyiv.
▪ The Washington Post: No Russia-Ukraine peace talks expected this year, U.S. leak shows.
▪ The New York Times: New leaked documents show broad infighting among Russian officials.
▪ The Hill: Ukrainian prime minister directly asks Pentagon chief for fighter jets.
▪ The New York Times: Ukraine wants to buy weapons from Brazil, but the South American giant has repeatedly declined. Instead, it is offering to broker peace.
▪ The Washington Post: China’s struggles with lab safety carry danger of another pandemic.
▪ Reuters: China records world’s first human death from H3N8 bird flu.
▪ Bloomberg News: Putin approved the arrest of a U.S. reporter on spying charges.
China and Russia are conducting secret talks with Iran to replenish the country’s supply of a key chemical compound used to propel ballistic missiles, according to diplomats familiar with the matter. The move would mark a clear violation of United Nations sanctions and possibly help Moscow replenish its depleted stock of rockets.
The exact quantity of the compound Iran is seeking to purchase is unclear, but the diplomats estimate it would be sufficient to build thousands of rockets, some of which could end up being deployed against Ukraine (Politico EU).
OPINION
■ The only people who believe the Supreme Court is apolitical are on it, by Carlos Lozada, opinion columnist, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/43sBgFC
■ Ukraine’s spring offensive just got harder, by Andreas Kluth, columnist, Bloomberg Opinion. https://bloom.bg/406NEs2
WHERE AND WHEN
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The House will hold a pro forma session at 11 a.m. Lawmakers will return to the Capitol next week.
The Senate meets at 8:45 a.m. for a pro forma session.
The president is in Ireland where he will meet with President Michael Higgins. Biden will participate in a tree planting ceremony and ringing of the Peace Bell. He will meet with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of Ireland. Biden will deliver an address to the Houses of Oireachtas at 10:45 ET and attend a dinner at Dublin Castle.
Vice President Harris and second gentleman Doug Emohoff will deliver remarks at 11 a.m. to wounded warriors, their caregivers and families at the White House South Lawn as part of the annual Soldier Ride. Harris will wrap up the administration’s three weeks of salesmanship for infrastructure spending on Biden’s watch. She will announce the administration’s funding of $300 million for nine bridge projects, including the Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge between Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Va., which she will visit at 3:30 p.m. to announce upgrades of $72 million. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg plans to visit Castleton-on-Hudson Bridge in Albany, N.Y., White House senior adviser and infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu will be in Madison, Wis., and other officials will be in San Antonio, Texas; Union County, S.C.; and San Diego for similar bridge-focused events.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at 8:45 a.m. will join Millennium Challenge Corporation CEO Alice Albright and Finance Minister Sri Mulyani of Indonesia in signing a compact that will deliver funding for Indonesia’s Just Energy Transition Partnership program. The secretary will participate at 9:30 a.m. in a Group of 20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors. Yellen will hold a bilateral meeting at 1:45 p.m. with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal of Ukraine at the Treasury Department. She and Shmyhal will deliver brief remarks to the press after the meeting. Yellen at 3 p.m. will meet with finance ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling with the president this week.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo this morning will speak about the U.S. and Ukraine, along with other senior administration officials and members of Congress during an all-day event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Information and registration for live streamed remarks are HERE.
Economic indicator: The Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. will report on filings for unemployment benefits in the week ending April 8.
ELSEWHERE
➤ STATE WATCH
In Montana, a child tax credit proposal by Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) has stalled in the state legislature, due in part to opposition from Democrats. Although Gianforte said he will keep pushing for the $1,200-per-child credit, the proposal didn’t garner enough support to be a standalone piece of legislation.
After the pandemic-era expansion of the federal child tax credit expired at the end of 2021, Montana became one of several states to consider a local measure. But Big Sky Country’s situation is unique, as several Democrats joined Republicans in stymieing the progress of the governor’s proposal (The New Republic).
▪ Politico: Fifty mayors open up about their battles with crime, gun violence.
▪ The New York Times: Will North Carolina be the “beginning of the end” of the Medicaid expansion fight?
📚 Officials in a Central Texas county are gearing up to close the local public libraries after a federal judge in Austin ordered them to return banned books to shelves. Commissioners in Llano County are convening a special meeting Thursday about whether to “continue or cease operations of the current physical Llano County Library System,” a move that would mark a sharp escalation in the nation’s ongoing book wars, which are a proxy for battles about the teaching of LGBTQ issues and race (Axios).
Meanwhile, in Missouri, House Republicans voted to defund all of the state’s public libraries as part of a proposed $45.6 billion state budget that will soon move to a vote in the Republican-controlled state Senate. The proposal to cut library aid followed a recent lawsuit — by the ACLU of Missouri on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association — filed against the state last February.
The lawsuit seeks to declare unconstitutional Senate Bill 775, which has resulted in more than 300 books getting banned from school libraries, many of which include LGBTQ characters or racial justice themes (Heartland Signal).
➤ HEALTH & WELLBEING
The Biden administration is declaring xylazine-laced fentanyl an official emerging drug threat to the nation, the first time any drug has been given that label. Xylazine, also known as “tranq,” is an easily accessible veterinary drug approved for use in animals as a sedative and pain reliever, but it is also being used by drug dealers as a low-cost cutting agent in drugs like fentanyl as a way to extend a user’s high (The Hill).
“I’m troubled about what I’ve learned about the devastating impact of the fentanyl xylazine combination, which is growing in youth across the nation,” said Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. “Testing for xylazine is uneven across the United States, which makes it hard to get the national picture. Many communities are not even aware of this threat in their backyard.”
▪ The Atlantic: The moms who breastfeed without being pregnant.
▪ The Washington Post: The tragic, preventable reasons syphilis is surging among U.S. infants.
Since a court ruling threatened the availability of mifepristone, a key drug used in medication abortion, worried patients have been calling in to clinics. They are “incredibly worried about whether or not they still have a valid appointment, whether they can obtain the care that they need. It’s heartbreaking,” Adrienne Mansanares, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which has clinics in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, told The Associated Press. For now, clinics around the country are trying to assure patients that nothing has immediately changed while also devising backup plans in case the ruling stands.
“Please understand that this judge’s decision does not mean that medication abortion is not safe,” Iffath Hoskins, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told journalists this week. “It is safe. It is effective. And it should be an available option for all who seek abortion care.”
▪ The Associated Press: White House moves to protect some abortion patients’ records.
▪ CNBC: Abortion pill ruling puts “judge shopping” concerns back in spotlight.
▪ USA Today: Some states stockpiled abortion pills after Texas judge’s ruling on mifepristone.
THE CLOSER
Take our Morning Report Quiz
And finally … It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Inspired by details of U.S. government actions this week, we’re eager for some smart guesses about bureaucratic federal designations.
Be sure to email your responses to asimendinger@digital-staging.thehill.com and kkarisch@digital-staging.thehill.com — please add “Quiz” to your subject line. Winners who submit correct answers will enjoy some richly deserved newsletter fame on Friday.
The State Department on Monday ramped-up its efforts to free which American with an official U.S. designation of “wrongfully detained”?
- Paul Whelan
- Evan Gershkovich
- Paul Overby
- Kai Li
Biden’s drug czar on Wednesday used an official designation that requires creation of a federal plan within 90 days to deal with a crisis. What did he identify as an “emerging threat”?
- Heroin
- Recreational cannabis
- Tranq
- Juul
Some Democrats in Congress this week advised the administration to apply “enforcement discretion” at the Food and Drug Administration in response to a federal judge’s order to ban what medicine or treatment?
- COVID-19 vaccine for children under age 5
- Mifepristone
- Viagra for women
- Noninvasive device for overactive bladders
The government on Tuesday labeled Sami Mahmud Mohammed al Uraydi a “specially designated global terrorist.” What does that designation do?
- Freezes all assets and property subject to U.S. jurisdiction
- Advertises a bounty on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list
- Authorizes a red notice on Interpol
- Files a U.S. criminal complaint with the International Terrorism Tribunal
Stay Engaged
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